She found Hei in the kitchen, stirring some instant rice and frozen vegetables in a wok. The sight was so strangely domestic that for a moment it threw her, and she forgot that she was hiding out in a safe house with the Black Reaper. Actually, she wasn't entirely sure that that had even sunken in yet.

"What did you tell her?" Hei asked without looking up.

"That she can trust you. Us. Nothing more specific than that. It was hard enough for her to hear about her roommate - I think she's going to need some time to process." Misaki leaned against the fridge and watched him, fascinated by the way his arms moved. She'd been a little jealous earlier, seeing those arms around Xu.

"Why are you cooking?" she asked, mainly to forestall a dangerous train of thought.

Hei raised an eyebrow. "I'm hungry."

"Oh. Wait, is cooking…" she cut herself off before she could say 'your payment.' Some contractors were reticent about their price, especially if such knowledge made them vulnerable.

But Hei must have known what she was going to say, because he answered, "No, it's not. Cooking helps me…re-center myself, I guess."

Misaki smiled. "I see. I swim for that."

He added some more oil to the wok, and tossed the mixture. "I know. Yin told me."

"You had Yin watching me?" she said with a start. She'd thought he trusted her a little more than that.

"No. She keeps an eye on people she worries about, on her own," Hei said with a slight upturning of his mouth that was almost like a smile. "She asked me one day why you were always in the water."

Not for the first time, Misaki wished that she could see specters. She liked the idea of Yin watching over her. "What did you tell her?"

He shrugged, and pulled two bowls out of the cupboard. "That I didn't know. Do you want some?"

"Sure."

There was no table in the little kitchen, so they sat side by side on the sofa to eat. It was almost cozy. Misaki couldn't help but be reminded of the last time they had eaten together. "Was it true?" she asked abruptly. "What you told me before, about how you learned to cook?"

"It was true."

That surprised her; she was gratified that he had willingly told her something personal like that.

"What do we do now?" she asked. "You know where the key you're looking for is."

"I'm not looking for it."

Misaki blinked at him. "What do you mean? I thought -"

"My employers are looking for it. My orders were to get it from Iwakara. He didn't have it, or know where it was. My job is over, unless I receive orders otherwise. And I haven't."

Sometimes rational thought comes in handy. But she knew that concern for Xu was his underlying motivation, which made it decidedly unrational. "The MSS are probably still looking for Xu."

"We can deal with that in the morning; she's safe for now."

"So, is there anything I need to know, that you didn't want to say in front of her?" she asked, more to keep him talking than out of any real desire for information.

"Not really." Hei stood up and went into the kitchen for another helping. "The contractor you shot was dead. The woman told me that there had been another man there, but he must have run."

Misaki nodded. "He took off when I opened the door; I was about to chase after him, but then I noticed the contractor and focused on him instead."

"The man isn't important, just a thug who does brute work for the MSS, same as the woman. She didn't know anything except that they were ordered to obtain the phone."

Misaki pushed a pea around in her bowl. "I shouldn't have killed the contractor. If I'd just disabled him, I could've taken Xu away while you questioned him; I bet he knew more."

"Not necessarily." He finished his latest bowl. "You saved Jiao-tu's life."

Misaka continued stabbing at the pea. "Maybe if I'd arrived there sooner, I could have gotten control of the situation - I thought she had gone into the restroom, and only checked the alley just in case I was wrong; but I waited too long."

"It's useless to second guess decisions made in the field," Hei told her. Then he added quietly, "Would it be strange for me to tell you that you did the right thing?"

"I don't need your approval," she said a little testily.

Hei gave her a long look. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." She ate the pea, as if that would somehow prove that she was fine, instead of envisioning the dead contractor falling to the ground, over and over again, the gunshot ringing loud in her ears.

"Was that the first time you've killed someone?"

Misaki wanted to say no, but had a feeling that he would know it was a lie. Instead of answering, she got up to wash her bowl.

"I should have followed Jiao-tu myself," Hei said, following her into the kitchen to help wash up. "Then you wouldn't have had to kill him."

Misaki scrubbed her bowl forcefully. "I'm a section chief of the Metropolitan Police Department. I know full well that I may be required to use lethal force on a suspect at any time, and I've always been prepared for that eventuality." Even as she echoed the words that she'd heard over and over again from academy instructors, she felt their hollowness. "I didn't hesitate when I saw him threatening Xu, and I don't regret it. Whether you killed him or I did, the end result would have been the same."

Hei leaned over and took the bowl from her hands, his shoulder pressing against hers. "There's being prepared to take a life, and then there's actually doing it."

"What would you know about it!" she snapped. As if a contractor ever felt guilt or remorse for the things they did. Suddenly unable to bear being in the same space as him, she left him to the dishes and returned to the sofa. Her head was starting to hurt. She took off her glasses and massaged her temples.

A few minutes later, Hei sat down on the sofa next to her, carefully, as if expecting her to snap at him again. She did her best to ignore him. Then he said, in a voice so quiet that she almost didn't hear, "I was still human. The first time I killed a man."

Misaki wasn't sure if she'd heard correctly. "You…what?"

Hei leaned forward, elbows on his knees. She could see the tension across his back. Did he ever truly relax?

"Do you want to know how my parents died?" he asked, not looking at her.

"I…" Did she? "You don't have to tell me."

Hei waited a long moment, seeming to gather his thoughts, then began. "You remember what it was like after the Gates first appeared. People were panicking, and there were all kinds of stories about disappearances and strange events. The government in my hometown imposed an early curfew, to help keep the public under control."

"It was the same here," Misaki said, then mentally berated herself for interrupting.

But Hei just nodded. "A few days after the Gates appeared, I was on my way home from my grandfather's martial arts school, where I went every day after my classes. I had to run to get home before the curfew. But when I got there, I could hear shouts from inside. I snuck in as quietly as I could, and when I reached the main room, I saw my father lying on the floor, and my mother holding him, crying and shouting at my sister."

"Your sister?" Misaki felt a lump forming in the pit of her stomach.

"She was just standing there, like she was in shock. Xing had been acting strangely in the last couple of days, but it seemed like a normal response, at first. Even though I'd never seen anyone die before, I could tell right away that my father was dead. I started to go into the room, but then my mother said, 'How could you do this? What kind of monster are you?', and I realized that she was shouting at Xing.

"Xing answered, completely void of emotion: 'Family bonds are meaningless. Why don't you understand that?' Our mother just broke down sobbing then, and most of what she said was incoherent, but she said something about not being able to live without Father. Then Xing said, 'Oh, I see.' And before I knew what was happening, she'd reached out her hand, and Mother was dead."

"Oh god," Misaki breathed, horrified. She'd never suspected that his sister had been a contractor. She wondered what her ability was, but didn't ask; if Hei wanted to tell her, he would.

"Then she turned to me, and said, 'You understand, don't you, Brother?'"

"What did you do?" Misaki asked, afraid of the answer.

"Nothing. Before I could react, she fell asleep."

"She…"

"It was her price." There was a note of bitterness in Hei's voice. "I thought she was dead too, at first. When I felt her pulse, I carried her back to her bedroom. I didn't understand what had happened, but I couldn't call the police - they would take her away, and I was sure I would never see her again if that happened. And I was afraid to call my grandfather or uncle - what if she tried to kill them too?

"She woke up a couple of hours later, and was confused as to why I was so upset. All she could say was that killing our parents had been the logical thing to do; she didn't show any kind of remorse or grief. Eventually I convinced her that we should run, that if anyone ever found out what happened, they would lock her up. At first she just claimed that she would kill anyone who tried, as if it would be the easiest thing in the world, but she conceded after I explained that if she started killing cops left and right, they would just shoot her. So we packed a bag, I took as much money as I could find, and we left.

"I kept thinking that she would snap out of it, return to her old self, but she didn't change. We couldn't stay too long in any one place, because eventually Xing would kill someone, for some reason that only made sense to her. New contractors have trouble restraining themselves; they have to learn that even if an action is rational at the moment, there are long-term consequences they need to consider. It was especially hard for Xing, being so young and inexperienced at living even as a normal human. It was up to me to make sure that we stayed safe; but I was her older brother, that was my job anyway."

"Weren't you afraid that she would kill you?" Misaki asked.

Hei paused, as if the idea had never occurred to him. "No," he answered at last. "It was always in her best interest that I stayed alive; we both knew it. She was completely vulnerable while she paid her price, and I was willing to do whatever I had to do to protect her.

"About a month after we'd left home, we ran out of money. Xing figured out that she could use her power to rob ATMs; I didn't like it, but it was better than her killing and robbing a person, which she was completely willing to do. One night, she was stealing the money while I stood guard. I noticed a man down the street, watching us. As we headed back to the tenement where we were staying, he followed."

Misaki noticed that, just as in the park when he was translating Xu's statement, as he continued speaking his voice grew colder and harder. She realized now that it wasn't because he was just no longer bothering to feign emotion, like she'd thought earlier, but that it was more like a defense mechanism: despite being a contractor now, these memories were still painful for him.

Impulsively, she reached over and laid her hand on top of his. He didn't pull away like she feared he would, but instead turned his hand so that he could hold hers. His hand was rough and calloused, but warm.

Hei didn't look at her, he hadn't since he'd started speaking. "I didn't know if he'd seen Xing using her power, or if he'd seen us taking the money. I didn't know if he would tell anyone, or try anything. But we couldn't risk it; I didn't need Xing to tell me that killing him would be the rational thing to do. I told her to go back to our room, that I would take care of it. Xing wasn't very good then at regulating when she had to pay her price; she could fall asleep at any minute. But I think the real reason that I did it, was because I was starting to forget what she had been like, before the Gates, and I couldn't bear to see my sister kill one more person.

"The man had stopped outside the entrance to the tenement. I doubled back and got around behind him. I didn't want to kill him, I didn't want to kill anyone, but I wanted to protect Xing more than anything; and once I had decided that, it was almost easy. I had taken a hunting knife when we left home, from my father's fishing gear. The man was taller than me, and stronger, but I was faster. One thrust to his kidney dropped him to the ground. It took me two tries to open his throat, but the pain from the kidney wound was so debilitating that he couldn't struggle much.

"It wasn't until the next morning that it really hit me, what I'd done. And even then, I told myself that it had been necessary. Xing didn't say anything about it."

Misaki didn't know if she'd ever heard anything so tragic. "How old were you?" she asked quietly.

Hei paused to think. "Xing was nine, so I was…twelve? Probably. We lasted another couple of months on our own, before the organization finally tracked us down. They told Xing that if she agreed to work for them, they would train her to use her ability and provide her with whatever she needed - education, clothes, food, a place to live. They told me that they would use ME to erase my memories of the past few months, our parents' deaths, and of what my sister had become. I could go back home."

"But you refused."

Hei nodded. "She was still my sister; I couldn't abandon her. I told them they weren't taking Xing without me. They were paramilitary men, armed and prepared to take on dangerous contractors; they just laughed at me. But Xing told them that it was necessary I stay with her, and that I'd already killed someone and would do it again; so they agreed to take me as well.

"Xing became Bai, and I became Hei. I went with her on all her missions as backup, and was sent on missions of my own. Those were the hardest. Killing a man to protect my sister was one thing, but even after months of training and preparation, assassination seemed like something I could never do. But then I thought about my sister being left alone and vulnerable without me, and I followed my orders and killed whoever they told me to.

"By the end of Heaven's War, I was the Black Reaper; just as deadly as any contractor, and more ruthless. You can bargain with a contractor; but not me. Every person I left alive was a person who might kill Bai the next day."

He had been human during the South American conflict? It was almost impossible to believe. "What happened to your sister?" Misaki asked carefully.

Hei's hold on her hand tightened a little. "I don't know. After Heaven's Gate disappeared, she was gone without a trace, and I was a contractor."

"Do you think that you made the right choice?" Misaki asked. "Staying with her?" She tried to imagine what she would do in such circumstances. She didn't have any siblings, but she thought that there wasn't much that she wouldn't do to protect her friends or her team.

"No," Hei said. "I'm sure it was wrong. If there was any part of Xing still left inside of Bai, she would have been horrified at what she had become, at what I had become; it probably would have been best for her if I'd just killed her that first night, when our parents died. But if I had the chance to go back…I'd do the same thing."

He leaned back tiredly into the cushions, still holding her hand. "Anyway, my point is - I do understand how you feel; you feel guilty for killing a person, and that's a good thing. It means you're human. But you're not like me. What you did truly was the right thing to do. You'll be okay."

She did feel better. Not just because of Hei's reassurances, but also because he had told her something so personal in order to try and comfort her.

"I'm sorry," Misaki told him. "For what I said this afternoon."

"You couldn't have known."

"I still shouldn't have said it."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, Misaki processing everything that he had told her, and enjoying the feeling of his hand around hers. He ran his thumb idly along her knuckles, and she felt her spine tingling in response.

"What was it like?" she asked suddenly. "Becoming a contractor?"

Hei just shrugged. "Nothing changed. I didn't even realize that I was a contractor at first. I was a heartless killer before, and I'm a heartless killer now."

He said it like it was of no consequence, but Misaki could hear the pain in his voice. He hated what he was. She leaned her head against his shoulder. "Then why do I feel so safe with you?"

Hei released her hand. She thought he was going to push her away, but instead he reached behind her and placed his hand on the curve of her waist. She tucked her feet underneath her on the sofa and let him pull her closer. "Because you are," he said softly.